Nothing like slapping a bit of bleeding edge technology into your forthcoming portable gaming handheld to grab a bit of attention, and iRiver is doing just that with their announced plans for sticking WiBro (that longer range, but slower tower hander off-er) into their 2006 device. WiBro is looking to be Korea's Wi of choice, and iRiver is planning this device for rollout along with the planned WiBro networks for South Korea. That's about all we know so far, other than their aim to compete with the PSP with this guy. We'll keep you posted, alright?

Not so sure about you, but this thing looks pretty much like an officially official Sony-made PSP headset to us. The first of what we hope will be many Sony-made PSP accessories to be released this holiday season — the PSP Giga Pack just isn't quite sitting right with us right now as their sole offering. Apparently this bad boy'll ship the 5th of November, and will run you up $19.99.

[Thanks, Rohan]

We're a bit surprised we didn't get a liveblog-like stream of emailed press releases from Tiger Telematics this morning because today's their big day in North America. That's right, the Gizmondo is officially on sale for $229 with fourteen launch titles. They did roll deep by buying a full-page ad in USA Today with Verne Troyer (aka Mini Me) shilling the Gizmondo, but we're not so sure a launch with some weak hype, obvious insecurity with their press presence, abysmal sales abroad, and a third of a billion in mounting debt is reason enough for Tiger's EU managing director Carl Freer to be "extremely proud of what [they've] achieved."

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

You know, we're not gonna tell you how to live your life, so if you want to spend $15 of your hard earned dollars on the "PSP Smart Charging Dock"—a PSP dock sure to drive away all but your most loyal compatriots with its intense gaudiness—be our guest. Just don't say we didn't warn you about sudden losses in guests at your place of residence. Unless that's what you're actually going for, anyway.

If you were ever curious as to exactly what was entailed in a PSP-bricking (for the uninitiated, that's when running some code that kills your PSP entirely), famed antivirus company F-Secure (who we hope you should well know by now) plunked down the $250 to do an on-camera bricking, for, um, educational purposes. It's not pretty. In fact, you may want to shield their eyes if you've got children (or gamers) in the room. The lesson to learn here? Always use protection, kids—never run unverified arbitrary code.

Watch [14MB WMV]

For everyone who thought the Datel 4GB PSP drive seemed too good (or suspect) to be true, import gaming giant Lik Sang gave it the once over after receiving a unit before their first shipment of the devices comes in. We really like the idea of Datel selling these things as a straight enclosure so we can roll our own drive (specifically a large capacity CF drive, for example), but make sure you're not counting on more than 4GB of space if you're going to buy and mod it—the PSP can't address more than 4GB of Memory Stick memory, so you can't exactly go nuts on the thing. Coming soon via LS for $200 cash money.

[Via PSPnews]

Links to PSP formatted subway maps for other cities around the world have been dribbling in since Thursday's story about that PSP NYC subway map, so we figured we'd post a few of them up. Let us know if there any others out there and we'll add them to the list.

Read - Barcelona
Read - Berlin
Read - Boston
Read - Chicago
Read - Frankfurt
Read - Hamburg
Read - London
Read - Mexico City
Read - Milan
Read - Moscow
Read - Munich
Read - New York City
Read - Nuremberg
Read - Oslo
Read - Osaka
Read - Paris (Metro + RER)
Read - Rome
Read - Santiago
Read - Stockholm
Read - Stuttgart
Read - Sydney
Read - Tokyo
Read - Washington DC Metro

Dude, if you thought those screenshots of a Pocket PC Phone running a Windows Mobile version of iTunes looked fradulent, you're definitely not going to be feeling these pics of a PSP running iTunes 5.0 that have turned up. It's especially hard to believe that Apple and Sony would get together on this given how much they've bickered over the relatively simple matter of adding Sony artists to the Japanese version of the iTunes Music Store, but stranger things have happened this year, right? Anyway, some person claims to have played with a PSP running a mobile version of iTunes that their "friend" managed to get a copy of. Easily faked, especially since the PSP has a photo viewer (a video clip might have reassured us, but no dice), so we're officially casting suspicion on this one until we can get our hands on a copy of the software.

[Thanks, Julian & Stan]

UPDATE: Yup, just like we thought, confirmed as fake!

Hundreds of European stores opened their doors at the stroke of midnight last night to usher in the first PlayStation Portables (legally) sold on the Continent.  At the same time, Berlin, Germany, home to Sony's European headquarters, was an embarrassingly quiet gaming town during those late hours, as Germans tend to think games "make young people stupid." Nevertheless, Sony hopes to make available (and sell through) 1 million PSPs over the next two weeks to Europeans who have had to endure a launch date that had been pushed back five months already.

Of course, launch sales have been affected to some degree by crafty gray-market importers, which Sony has sought to shut down, but that can't dampen the enthusiasm of the hundreds of thousands who have pre-ordered the sleek multimedia marvel. Anything else? Well, it looks like Sony will support the latest firmware update, which enables web browsing and attempts to stamp out emulation (among other hacks), but not make it mandatory just yet: "A spokeswoman for Sony said the units on sale in Europe will not have the new firmware preloaded, but will come with a disc that will allow users to load it onto their machines themselves." 5 million PSPs have been shipped outside of Europe up to this point, but Sony would like to ship 13 million handhelds "in the year to next March." That's quite a tall order, until you realize they projected UMD sales of 130 million by 2008.

Say, anyone know whatever happened to the PSP music download service they had planned? Is that set to go in Europe anytime soon? Just thought we'd throw that out there while we're on the subject. Cheerio and congrats to all our PSP-lovin' friends across the pond.

[UPDATE: Not to leave anyone out, I felt you should know that the PSP launched earlier in Oceania/Australia last night as well, which might depend on which part of the world you live in. Hope that helps. Thanks, Alex!]

Yep, it's here: we're getting reports from all over that the North American version of the PSP's new 2.0 firmware upgrade has arrived. At least if you're using Network Update, that is. The upgrade is still not available for download via Sony's PlayStation Portable site, but odds are it'll show up there sometime later today.

Update: The firmware upgrade is now available from the Playstation/PSP website.  And, like magic, the webpage looks just like the staging website people found online two days ago, before Sony took it offline.
[Thanks to everyone who wrote in about this]

We know it's been a rough eleven days, but it looks like your wait is almost over — Sony just put up a placeholder site detailing all of the new features of the North American version of the PSP's new 2.0 firmware upgrade. Nothing all that different from the Japanese version (surprise, surprise), but at least now you won't technically be voiding your warranty. The download itself isn't available yet (we just tested and it's still v1.52), at least not as of this writing, but we're guessing that it won't be long now.

[Thanks, SGOlsen]

Update: Ok, so apparently a bunch of people found a login (scea/scea—how original) to the PSP update site, which in return said something to the effect of the update being made available August 24th (i.e. tomorrow). Um, and now the PSP update site appears to have been taken down, removed, or is otherwise missing. Aiight, square one. And thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Well, it's officially August 22nd in every time zone now, which means that Sony didn't make good on its earlier promise to release version 2.0 of the PSP's firmware here in North America during the week of August 15th. We still don't know when they'll get around to it, but check out this incredibly non-committal response reader Mike S. got from Sony when he emailed them asking about the delay:

Hello Mike,

Thank you for writing us.

We do not know the exact date of the 2.0 system update for the PSP(TM) portable entertainment system at this time. We recommend that you continue to visit the link below during the week of August 22, 2005 to check for the latest updates on the PSP System Update page.

http://www.us.playstation.com/psp.aspx?id=softwareupdate

Byron
Multimedia CSR
Sony Computer Entertainment America Consumer Services Department

The funny thing is that it's not like anyone even cares all that much — how many people really bought the PSP expecting a steady stream of firmware upgrades? — it's more that Sony just seems to be needlessly jerking everyone around right now. Besides, if you need a PSP with a web browser that badly, you've probably already installed the Japanese version of the firmware by now.

UPDATE: They're now promising it'll be "available during the week of August 22nd."

Sony already pushed back the North American release of version 2.0 of the PSP's firmware once, but they better get on it if they're planning on making the upgrade magic happen "during the week of August 15th" like they promised — they're seriously starting to run out of time (as of right now PlayStation.com still lists v1.52 for download). We can deal with another delay, but if there is one then it's just best to be upfront about it, you know?

Nyko joined the fray of PSP speaker devices with their Theater Experience, a more unusual hybrid of case, charger, stand, and speaker setup. Not a bad system for the 80 bones they're asking, but we keep trying to think of a place we could make use of this, and we're a hard time picturing it (no pun intended). So howsabout you think of it as a case + battery pack with some bonus speakers just in case (also no pun intended), yeah?